


The Care and Preservation of Nieces

by GoldenThreads



Category: Sins of the Cities Series - K. J. Charles
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Taxidermy, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-03 01:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads
Summary: Even the best families have their share of growing pains. Rowley has it under control.





	The Care and Preservation of Nieces

**Author's Note:**

> Never in my life did I think I'd need to tag something as #Taxidermy. Incredible.

The lodging house did not admit guests as a rule, especially not in the dim hours after supper, but no one had the mind to turn Nathaniel away. It had once been his own home for long enough that he didn’t even need to mention his work as Clem’s occasional solicitor, he simply went where he wished, and he was already pacing the study before Clem and Rowley even made it upstairs.

A large box, about the width of a woman’s shoulders and twice their depth, sat on the table under a dark cloth. Rowley knew immediately what game was afoot, as well as why Nathaniel had brought it here instead of the Jack and Knave. The man had his pride, after all.

“Nobody’s in any danger,” Nathaniel grit out as Clem fussed over his sudden appearance. “This is a personal call, Clem. I assure you.”

At a loss, Clem looked to Rowley for assurance, or maybe to pick through the concerns in his whirring head – if it were truly personal, then wasn’t the Jack a better locale? If something was wrong, why wasn’t Nathaniel halfway through the telling already? With a small smile, Rowley tipped his head towards his empty cup, and Clem scurried off in palpable relief.

Nathaniel tipped back his shoulders into an instinctive stance of authority, took a breath, and Rowley simply couldn’t help himself. 

He took his usual chair and folded his hands against his knee. Smiled. “Good evening, Nathaniel. Is everything well? You seem a bit—"

“What in God’s name is _this?”_ Nathaniel swept the dark covering from the case, less as one might unveil a magic trick and more as a frantic undertaker confirming exactly how many bodies remained in the cart. 

Clem choked on a shrill, horrified squeak. Thank heavens he hadn’t yet begun the tea.

Within the glass case, a northern goshawk stood with its wings poised on the verge of flight, not quite outstretched, yet smug in its suggestion of power and grace. It must have dropped in the prime of its life, its plumage locked in stark black and white without any hint of the blue pallor that would set in with age. The white eye stripes had been carefully shaped to give the impression of ferocious brows, the sort that promised no mercy for a single frightened rodent. The effect was rather undone by the fact that it wore a sleek leather harness tucked around its breast, reins at the shoulder, and a sly weasel in a silk-lined magician’s cape and top hat on its back.

Rowley glanced at the monstrosity, blinked once, and looked back at Nathaniel. “Miss Sukey’s birthday present.”

“No. You will take it back.” 

“Surely you allow the girl her presents?” he asked mildly. “Unless it is the present itself. I wasn’t aware you held such disdain for my profession.”

“Rowley.” A growl, this time. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Rowley could see his dear, sweet Clem square back his shoulders as though preparing himself to intercede. As if Nathaniel would ever bring more bite than bark to their door, especially over something as silly as this. He flashed Clem a smile. “The tea, love?”

“Oh!”

Nathaniel pushed the case so far across the table that it nearly plummeted into Rowley’s lap. “I appreciate you playing along with her mischief,” he drawled without any appreciation whatsoever, “I even appreciate your artistry. But I cannot, will not, allow this in my home.” 

A faint blush had risen to his cheeks. All anger, surely. 

Rowley looked to the proud goshawk and its charming master. The weasel’s face had been set in a puckish grin that truly added to the sparkle in its glass eyes, as if it knew its noble steed would have no qualms about protecting them with claw and beak and blood. Rowley raised his eyes again to Nathaniel.

“May I ask what is wrong with the piece? It may be a matter of taste.” He could hear the rattle of the tea set as Clem tried to contain his laughter. 

Now Nathaniel was all red and little of it from anger. “You damn well know _taste_ is the least of it.”

“I assure you I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Enough, Rowley. Enough.” His shoulders slumped, no more than a hair, but a slump of defeat nonetheless. “May I at least inquire what I have done to draw the young lady’s ire?”

_Have you tried asking her?_ Rowley swallowed down his own displeasure at a situation that was, in the end, absolutely none of his business. And yet.

Nathaniel had taken new lodgings on a quiet side street near enough to Robin Hood Yard for Justin to have an easy jaunt to the office. A full house with room for four, furnished to the nines. The office took up half the ground floor, walls lined with empty bookshelves for all of Justin’s notebooks, and the dining room table fit a full party for entertaining. And entertain he had, inviting their entire circle for a formal if laidback dinner in ostensible celebration of the recent expansion of Braglewicz & Lazarus.

A lot of action that should have spoken louder than words, but didn’t, because the man hadn’t bothered to actually _talk_ to his new would-be wards. He simply whisked them away and turned their lives upside-down and expected affection to follow. He provided a house and blithely assumed time would make it a home. 

In short, Nathaniel was as much a mystery to Emma and Sukey as they were to him, and it showed. Rowley hadn’t much enjoyed the little party at their home, for no fault of the company or the food. It was the girls that troubled him, peering around corners to catch a glimpse of Justin’s new social circle, decked out in perfectly tailored clothes that ill-suited them nevertheless, desperately trying to catch Justin’s eye as Nathaniel lured him away to new pursuits. A pair of confused rock doves come to sit by their favorite visitor, only to find the bench already shared, already full.

When the carousing got a bit much, Rowley and Clem had slipped off to the kitchen for a moment of quiet instead. The girls had begged pardon with off-kilter curtsies to find strangers between them and their sought-after seconds, only to end up baffled as Clem sat them down and set about rummaging for the tea and biscuits himself. The highlight of Rowley’s evening had been the surprise and horror mixed on Clem’s face as Sukey finally relaxed enough to speak plain. Plainly foul, in truth, but their comfort was a victory for Rowley just the same.

Now, looking at Nathaniel’s warring fury and resignation over the idea of Sukey preferring anyone else as a new confidant, he wondered how best to get the message across. Nathaniel knew nothing about children and had never wished for them. Neither did Rowley, for that matter, but he remembered what it was like to tiptoe around your mentor’s— _savior’s_ —friends, uncertain of your own position, the idea of anyone else in the world giving a damn for you chafing like sackcloth hand-me-downs. It wasn’t something Nathaniel could solve with a smile and deep pockets.

“She hasn’t much in the way of worldly possessions,” Rowley said carefully, his tone so pleasant that Nathaniel ought to feel like an utter barbarian in comparison. “I could hardly turn down a request for a few stalwart friends to keep her company.”

Affronted, Nathaniel leaned across the table to argue, “She has _plenty_ of—"

“Especially if she is to be sent away for schooling.”

Nathaniel’s jaw clicked shut. His hands worked at his sides, as if unsure whether the new swell of frustration had arrived from the stuffed mockery, his own overbearing determination to have his— _Justin’s_ girls well cared for, or the realization that Sukey had inherited a brutal penchant for petty revenge. 

Rowley gently nudged the case back across the table towards Nathaniel. “If she wishes to return the gift, I should gladly receive it. But it will be her choice, I think.”

“…Quite.” 

“Tea?” Clem offered cheerfully, stepping into the silence between the two men and purposefully not looking at the valiant little weasel and its mount. 

At a loss, Nathaniel finally sank into the offered chair and received his tea. He answered Clem’s easy chatter with stilted murmurs of agreement or argument, clearly lost in his own thoughts.

Rowley wasn’t about to stick his nose in their business any further, though if Nathaniel hadn’t sat down with the girls for a proper heart-to-heart by week’s end, he thought he might offer Sukey some alterations for the diorama. Another two mice as passengers for the goshawk, perhaps. As long as they rode between its wings, and not beneath its talons, Rowley had no doubt that an amenable resolution could be found.

-

Once Nathaniel was gone, covered box in hand, Clem closed the door and leaned back against it with a triumphant grin. “You didn’t make it.”

“I should hope not.” Rowley’s shoulders trembled with the mirth he finally let loose. “It’s _dreadful._ But she did ask, and I’d hate to disappoint her.”

Clem hummed, looking so warm and delighted that Rowley found himself drifting over at once. Clem swept up Rowley’s right hand once he was near enough and gently stroked against the inkstains on his fingertips. “Well, yes, but you see, the craftsmanship isn’t up to par either.” He’d been making a careful study of Rowley’s work for months, sitting in on bits and pieces of a good three-quarters of Rowley’s new stock. It was strangely gratifying to think he’d still been watching the product and not just Rowley’s quick hands. “I could see one of the seams on the weasel, or maybe it was the firelight, I suppose, but _you’d_ never—”

Rowley cut him off with a kiss, soft and simple and perfect.

“But how did you find it?” Clem asked as soon as they parted, or rather even before, his eyes bright and his lips lingering so close that his words hummed against Rowley’s cheek. “It’s so—”

Accurate.

“Ah. Yes.” He supposed he couldn’t wave a hand and say _a preserver never reveals his secrets,_ as a certain of Sukey’s guardians may have done. “We may have designed it? And I may have…procured the materials? To preserve the spirit, you see. But everything after that was the work of another’s hands.”

“That’s more than I would have thought.” Clem’s face was a strange mix of disappointment and deliberation, and Rowley’s heart stuttered at the sight. 

Was he upset? They shared a common horror of those unsightly crimes against the natural dignity of a dead creature, and maybe Clem saw it as a betrayal for Rowley to involved himself even at arm’s length. He hadn’t wanted to, of course, but Sukey had put such thought into exactly what she wanted to portray. Or was it standing up to Nathaniel, however kindly? He would always be Clem’s friend, no matter how politely he tried to involve Rowley, and perhaps he’d crossed a line that he hadn’t seen drawn. 

“Do you, um.” Clem took his hand once more, fiddling with the ends of his sleeve this time, smoothing his thumbs over the hem. “You’re fond of the girls, fonder than I’d thought you would be, because they were dreadfully loud and you’re very. Not. And Greta’s always asking your opinion about the nursery, and you’ve been working on all of those dragons for her, the ones you don’t let me see yet, and I wondered if maybe you wished we could—”

Rowley covered Clem’s mouth with his free hand. He couldn’t kiss him, not yet, too busy trying to bite back a laugh that Clem wouldn’t find funny in the slightest. Dear Lord, did Clem think he’d gone baby mad?

“All I want is what’s in the room at this very moment,” he finally managed in a low voice. Then, glancing around quickly, he added, “And Cat, wherever he may be lurking.”

He could feel Clem’s relieved smile under his palm, but didn’t pull his hand away. After a moment he moved it to stroke Clem’s cheek instead, thumbing idly at the roughness of his beard. Rowley’s words seemed to have shaken off more than one anxiety from Clem’s shoulders, and he cursed himself for not noticing they were there. Though perhaps even Clem hadn’t realized.

_Are you worried about Greta?,_ Rowley wanted to ask. He shelved the question for later. Family issues couldn’t be resolved so easily, not with promises and not with pointed dioramas, and Clem had more than most. Tim loved him, Greta loved him, and Rowley had no doubt that any children would cherish Clem as dearly as he deserved. But beyond Tim’s constant, easy approval, nothing in Clem’s life had ever pointed toward a future of happy, loving family.

So if that made it Rowley’s job to swallow his solitude and accept Greta’s invites going forward, to let the girls know his shop was a quiet, if eerie, place to hide if they ever needed the breathing room, to play the adoring uncle until Clem had settled himself into the role himself, then so be it. 

It was a good job, all heart and patience, and Rowley couldn’t ask for a better one.


End file.
